Personally, I have used A Small Orange for a couple of my websites and it has certainly worked well for me. Instead of just hyping on what this hosting has done for me, I would rather discuss on what makes a good hosting – the kind that you can depend on for your business in a long time to come.

These days, hardly any business, be they large or small, operate without a website. And it’s not difficult to understand why as :

More than 90 percent of consumers’ purchasing decisions start with researching in the search engines. A website enables you to showcase the products you’re promoting and details such as how or where to get them.

A website allows you to reach a wider audience, without them having to visit your store. For companies that ship worldwide, having a website enables a company to expand their customer base and reach those outside of its geographical location.

If done right, having a website and executing its promotion could be more cost-effective than more ‘traditional’ advertising methods like newspapers or TV.

Despite the benefits of having a website however, some small companies still do not have one. Perhaps, it is not that they don’t recognize the benefits of having a website. It could be that they find it a challenge (technically) to create one or (financially) challenging to maintain one, particularly if you operating on a low head count.

What is the Best Website Hosting for a Small Business?

Domain Names, Website Platform Options, Hosting

Creating a website always begins with the search for a domain name for your business.

So if you are into selling baby clothes for girls, you can head on to places like godaddy or namecheap to get something like babyclothesforgirls.com (by the way, babyclothesforgirls.com is not available but babyclothesforgirls.org is … just in case you ARE thinking of selling these types of clothing)

While a domain name is like a property, hosting is where you place that property so that people can find you. Thus choosing a reliable hosting is essential for the sustenance of your online property – your website.

There are various platforms for building a website such as Blogspot, Joomla, Tumblr and WordPress.

More than a quarter of websites are powered by WordPress and one of the reasons for its popularity is that it is a platform that can be quite easily managed regardless of your technical knowledge in creating a website.

There are two types of WordPress platforms – WordPress.com and WordPress.org – both powered by Automattic.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is free to use. If you use this platform, your website’s address will look something like:

http://www.yourdomainname.Wordpress.com

Personally, I would not recommend using WordPress.com as a platform to build your website because, for a start, having wordpress.com in your website address doesn’t look professional.

There are also limitations in using WordPress.com because you have limited choice of themes (that determine the look of your website) and use of third-party plugins (that provides flexibility in website experience for your audience).

If you are serious about creating and running a website for your small business, I suggest that you create the website with WordPress.org

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is the self-hosted WordPress blog that provides more flexibility in creating a website such as installing third-party themes and plugins.

Using WordPress.org will allow you to monetize your blog such as through affiliate marketing or placing ads through Adsense or Infolinks – things you can’t do with a website built through WordPress.com.

Unlike in the past, these days you don’t need to go through the hassle of downloading WordPress and then installing it into your hosting server. You can make use of WordPress as your website builder simply with a few ‘point and click’ features that the hosting company provides.

What To Look For in a Hosting?

Before settling on the best website hosting for your small business, you might want to use the following criteria to help you :

Hosting Server Compatibility With WordPress

As WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for blogs and websites, hosting servers these days support WordPress. You can install WordPress from your hosting server’s members area with just a few clicks.

However, if you don’t want to install WordPress yourself, A Small Orange team can install it for you at no charge.

Server Uptime

A good server uptime provided by a hosting company ensures that there’s very little to no possibility of your website going down.

You should look for server uptime of at least 99 percent. No hosting company would guarantee a 100 percent uptime.

A Small Orange guarantees 99.9 percent server uptime.

Bandwidth and Storage

Generally, higher bandwidth and storage means you have a larger space for your website. There are hosting options that offer unlimited bandwidth and storage. These would be good if you are thinking to build an ‘authority’ type of website or planning to build other websites apart from that for your small business.

Support

Having a great and reliable support is not only essential when you are looking for website hosting. It applies in every service that we wish to undertake. You want to get hosting with support that answer your queries efficiently and resolve any issues that you may have promptly.

A Small Orange – Ratings

Started in 2003, A Small Orange was built on the principle to offer hosting based on the customer’s needs rather than offering ‘unlimited plans’ which may not serve your small business’ purpose.

What I have been talking about so far is using A Small Orange to host a website powered by WordPress.

However, WordPress is NOT the only way you can build a great website.

While WordPress is relatively easy to handle, you might prefer to build your website with a ‘drag-and-drop’ method where you don’t have to worry about installing themes or plugins.

If you choose A Small Orange as your hosting server, you can do this simply with Weebly website builder.

To help you decide which method suits you and what kind of hosting plan you should go for, you can head over to A Small Orange guide below :

Conclusion

Creating a website is no longer a complicated process only for those who know CMS (Content Management System) or computer programming.

It can be a fun and fulfilling process, as long as you know the ultimate objective of that website. How your website look, what kind of content it holds can be changed as the website progresses.

If you are looking to create a website and simultaneously learn how to optimize, drive traffic to your website, then there’s no better place than HERE!

While A Small Orange has worked very well for me, you may have other suggestions on a great hosting.
Please don’t hesitate to share your experience below!

About The Author

Zailinah

I was a serial online product buyer till I found success in affiliate marketing. I created About Online Business to share my experience. As you are well aware, success is no walk in the park. But perseverance pays. Your opinion is important to me so feel free to share your thoughts. Our views may differ but that does not mean we can't learn from each other. Go ahead, leave me your thoughts below:)